"poor education" isn't the only reason. Some of these things were invented or borrowed in republican times. It is quite natural for the Malaysian Chinese to use "mata" becuase this is the word that they first came into contact with for the concept of "police" - keng-chhat is actually just a Kanji loan from japanese keisatsu.

"Lui" has been adopted as the word for a copper coin (not money in general) all the way up into Kng-sai (Guangxi) Sorry no characters on this computer.

I've never heard of taiwanese saying 'lui' and 'mata' in taiwanese shows. Furthermore, when I was in fujien province, those who never have any contacts with malaysians/singaporeans before didn't know what 'lui' is.

Lui is borrowed from the malay word 'duit', as chinese educated chinese can't pronounce the 'd' consonant, it is approximated as 'l'. The lost of 't' ending is due to lazy sound.

Onto another topic,

"pai tok" has a different meaning from 'tau ka ciu', it is used in different situations.
I hear a lot of 'to long' spoken in Malaysia/Singapore and they don't know that it's actually a malay word.

I've never heard of taiwanese saying 'lui' and 'mata' in taiwanese shows. Furthermore, when I was in fujien province, those who never have any contacts with malaysians/singaporeans before didn't know what 'lui' is.

Lui is borrowed from the malay word 'duit', as chinese educated chinese can't pronounce the 'd' consonant, it is approximated as 'l'. The lost of 't' ending is due to lazy sound.

Xng

They are both 外來字 brought back to China by Hokkiens who had worked in the Nanyang. I don't know how widespread they would be in Hokkien province, but they are certainly attested by dictionaries. They are more likely to be used in Amoy than in Taiwan, which was under the Japanese, so uses lots of Japanese words, but even Taiwan uses sabun, which came from Greek->Arabic->Portuguese

Lui 鐳was definitely used before in Amoy, even if younger people don't know it. I asked my friend in Taiwan (aged 50) and he knew it, just like he knew "Ang-mo" but he didn't use it in everyday life.

Lui is recorded in the 漢語方言大詞典 (p.7402) as a word for a copper coin 銅鐳 in Kaiping 開平, Huizhou 惠州 (in Hakka) Jieyang 揭陽 and in Teochiu, as well as in Amoy as a general word for money. From asking around I found out in Liuzhou 柳州 (Guangxi) 銅鐳 was the word for copper coins too.

Many Malay words found their way into China, you can't think that all cultural exchange was one way traffic. The 騎樓 or portico comes from Malay too. It was once called a kaki樓 in Amoy and came from Malay kaki-lima.

This is nothing to do with a lack of education, it is the same as Mandarin borrowing 麥克風 and 摩托車 instead of constructing Chinese words.

I am very astonished when somebody said "kahwin" is a Malay word. There is Mandrin version of it called "gou in" which generally means more than marriage. Therefore the Malays that adopted this word are always very cautious when using it because it can mean something bad.

As for duit, I have read somewhere that it came from the days when the Hokkiens were using shells for buttons - therefore buttons are liu wa. Shells were considered wealth when there was no usage of precious metals like bronze or copper.

As for "kha-ki" or kaki, comes from the stick for the ka. ka means the foot and the leg is actually kha ki. Then you have kha thui, and kha tak u and so on. WIth these, it is quite impossible that kaki comes from Malay.

As for "sayang" means something dearly loved. There is also a Mandarin version of this if you look at the classifical texts. When somebody says " hai ya, chin sayang". This means generall wasteful, but strictly it means losing some things dear to you. You should try save someting dear, don't you?

As for "tolong", the Chinese version is "dou long" which means help.

As for "tapi" or "tetapi" is a Hokkien word. It is not a Malay word.

These are just obvious examples.

It is quite sad, that our level of ancient Hokkien has not been championed because its development stopped after the Ming empire. And more need to be discussed carefully before misunderstanding spreads. In Singapore and Malaysia, the Chinese learnt there have almost exclusively ignorant of Hokkien (ancient phrases) and used modern and revolutionary ones instead.

Needless to say in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. In Taiwan, the Minan was banned from schools and universities for a long long time.

There are who are willing to see the dialect "bastardized" and put the ancient dialect into oblivion for their own purposes. Therefore discussions such as this should be open as much and be trapped by one's own limited knowledge, not knowing that they have been "educated" into such. I for one is an good example.

Maybe the good people should think whether "mabok", "hukum", "pekan" come from. These two seemingly are Malay words (no offence meant). In fact, the Malays and indigenous people of SEA should be thanked for retaining the jewels of the dialect Further analyses will confirm the words came from somewhere else.

If you say that those are hokkien words and not malay words, please give the chinese characters for it.

Are you saying that malay borrowed these basic words from hokkien and they don't have any original words ? Malay language borrow largely from sanskrit and arab. Suka and duka are actually sanskrit words and I learned them while reading buddhist scriptures.

It goes to show that the chinese in Malaysia/Singapore are confused as to what are hokkien words and what are non hokkien due to centuries of abuse.

The trouble lies in the fact that the chinese in nanyang in the past learn hokkien informally through words of mouth rather than formally through books. So when one 'teacher' talks in half-baked hokkien, the students also learn the 'half baked hokkien'.

This also happens in Malaysian cantonese which borrows some words from hokkien and malay but they are NOT cantonese words.

Last edited by xng on Thu Jul 01, 2010 3:43 pm, edited 4 times in total.

Ah-bin wrote:Lui 鐳was definitely used before in Amoy, even if younger people don't know it. I asked my friend in Taiwan (aged 50) and he knew it, just like he knew "Ang-mo" but he didn't use it in everyday life.

Lui is recorded in the 漢語方言大詞典 (p.7402) as a word for a copper coin 銅鐳 in Kaiping 開平, Huizhou 惠州 (in Hakka) Jieyang 揭陽 and in Teochiu, as well as in Amoy as a general word for money. From asking around I found out in Liuzhou 柳州 (Guangxi) 銅鐳 was the word for copper coins too.

Many Malay words found their way into China, you can't think that all cultural exchange was one way traffic. The 騎樓 or portico comes from Malay too. It was once called a kaki樓 in Amoy and came from Malay kaki-lima.

This is nothing to do with a lack of education, it is the same as Mandarin borrowing 麥克風 and 摩托車 instead of constructing Chinese words.

鐳 means 金屬元素 meaning metal element and not money. Money has already a character for it ie. Gin 銀 or Kim - 金. The old folks could have known about it due to their relatives visiting china from nanyang. I have relatives in china who know how to say 'suka, lorry' etc so do you think these are hokkien words ? It is due to the centuries of interchange between relatives of nanyang and china.

In ancient times, 金銀珠寶 means treasure or money (gold, silver, pearl). Copper was used for less expensive things like 10 cents coins.

If you combine it with copper which used to be used in china, then copper element 銅 does mean money. Gold element means money, silver element means money etc. But Lui 鐳 as a standalone don't mean money.

If 鐳 means money, then why is it that so many mandarin, minnan and cantonese dictionaries I checked didn't include that meaning ?

I don't know the connection between "money" and "sword ornament". Sword, sounds to me like something ancient, and ornament on a sword if often precious. Can that be "money" ? I try to keep an open mind here, we're dealing with an aged language, dealing with original characters. I doubt if dictionaries already published in the market are 100% reliable.

鐳 can be a another borrowed-sound. I am not sure if "radium" was known to anyone when the character was invented. It meant "jar" for wine. Let's not forget that Mandarin (or Cantonese, etc) has tons of 借音字 everywhere. Today, 胜 is the 簡化字 of 勝 that means "victory" but in ancient time, 胜 is "uncooked meat". You can tell from the radicals. Both, have nothing in common.

Suka could have been a locally-made Chinese word, I keep an open mind that it may even be classical Chinese because we read it with glottal stop in Penang.

Does anyone know Ikan Parang ? Do you think Parang Hu (Parang Fish) is a Malay laonword or Chinese word ? Ask any Hokkien scholar in Fujian and see what he says. Samseng does sound Chinese to me, and it's connected to 3 sacrifices to God in the ancient time, according to some old folks in Penang. However, it is unknown to Hokkien in China, as far as I check. Maybe some people do, I dunno.

Most Hokkiens in China cannot remember Pah-Sng is "waste". Same thing could have been happening since long time due to influence by foreign culture, eg: Mandarin, other dialects. Has anyone heard of the word Kham-Heng as "bully" ? It's widely used in Penang, it sounds nothing like English or Malay to me. But none of my Hokkien / Teochew friends in China knows what that is.

鐳 can be a another borrowed-sound. I am not sure if "radium" was known to anyone when the character was invented. It meant "jar" for wine.

It certainly wasn't known. The character has been used in the Nanyang for over two hundred years to mean money. In the records of the Chinese Hui-koan in Batavia they used it all the time to mean....money!

If 鐳 means money, then why is it that so many mandarin, minnan and cantonese dictionaries I checked didn't include that meaning ?

Barclay has it (p. 152 "a copper coin")

廈門方言詞典 has it (p. 132 meaning a "copper coin" and "money"

閩南方言詞典 has it too same meaning as above - but I don't have a page reference at the moment.

The answer to your question xng is.......go and buy some better dictionaries! (and also stop trying to look for Hokkien words in Cantonese and Mandarin dictionaries).

As for duit, I have read somewhere that it came from the days when the Hokkiens were using shells for buttons - therefore buttons are liu wa. Shells were considered wealth when there was no usage of precious metals like bronze or copper.

The origin of duit/lui has already been sorted out: from-Dutch-to-Malay-to-Hokkien:

Loan-Words In Indonesian And Malay by Russell Jones - on Google book search

Go to Page 68 - there it is. I'm sure the author of this book knows his stuff better than someone who thinks the name Peru comes from Hokkien.

As for "sayang" means something dearly loved. There is also a Mandarin version of this if you look at the classifical texts. When somebody says " hai ya, chin sayang". This means generall wasteful, but strictly it means losing some things dear to you. You should try save someting dear, don't you?

Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien all come from a common root. All the sounds if they are originally chinese and not borrowed comes from chinese characters which are in the comprehensive Kangxi dictionary. When people migrate to different regions the sound change, when dynasty change then the vocabulary change but the characters still remain the same as it is preserved in written classical chinese.

Why is it people simply refused to accept that these are malay words ? Just because you guys have been speaking it since young and refused to change back to the original ? When a borrowed word is borrowed into local tongue, the sound is modified to suit 'local' tongue. It is usually not the same as the original sound most of the time eg.

Suka means joy in sanskrit and duka means sorrow in sanskrit in which the meaning was changed to like and unhappy in malay.

The original word for 'like' in hokkien is Ka Ee which has a meaningful chinese character too. Putian Hing hua uses Ko Ee (as hing hua originated from Quanzhou minnan). Vowel A is usually changed to vowel O in Hing hua.

閩南方言詞典 has it too same meaning as above - but I don't have a page reference at the moment.

The answer to your question xng is.......go and buy some better dictionaries! (and also stop trying to look for Hokkien words in Cantonese and Mandarin dictionaries).

As far as I know, copper coin is called 銅錢 in both cantonese and mandarin. I have yet to ask my hokkien relatives in china what they are called there.

And didn't you say that Lui is borrowed from Malay which itself borrowed from Dutch ?

If Lui is a hokkien word, then why is it that those in China/Taiwan who have no nanyang relatives don't know what lui means ? They all use 'Cinn' 錢.

The dictionaries that I used are from world renowned HK university and UCLA university and another best selling taiwanese dictionary, I am sure they have better researchers than those I haven't heard of such as barclay.

You seem to forget that Hokkien, cantonese and mandarin all come from the same root written language (except for loan words). The beauty of chinese language is that each chinese character has an intrinsic meaning.

Last edited by xng on Fri Jul 02, 2010 8:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.

鐳 can be a another borrowed-sound. I am not sure if "radium" was known to anyone when the character was invented. It meant "jar" for wine. Let's not forget that Mandarin (or Cantonese, etc) has tons of 借音字 everywhere. Today, 胜 is the 簡化字 of 勝 that means "victory" but in ancient time, 胜 is "uncooked meat". You can tell from the radicals. Both, have nothing in common.

From the character, it definitely looks like it is a borrowed sound. The Gold radical means it belong to the metal group. The thunder character is borrowed for its sound. I think the modern meaning is 'radium' but the older meaning seems to point to 'metal element'. What does kangxi dictionary shows ?